


Brace for it

by ForWhatItsWorth



Category: Original Work
Genre: Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5577622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForWhatItsWorth/pseuds/ForWhatItsWorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story inspired by a tumblr post about braces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction: The metal in my mouth

"You're going to have such a great smile when you get them off!"

I never wanted braces. I could never stand the thought of them. But each time I mentioned it, my friends and family reminded me of how great my smile would look once they were gone. That was my only consolation. That was the only glimmer of hope in a pit of darkness.

But then came the war. It came and went too quickly for me to even have heard who started it, nor do I know who ended it. All I know is that my city is in ruins, buildings burn, people turn on each other, and the dentist's sign says "Open" but there is noone in there, and there door has been knocked off its hinges.

There is no more hope. There is only pain.  
The city is burning.  
My name is Maya Corra, and I may never be free of this curse that plagues my teeth.


	2. How far we will Fall

I sit in the dentists' burned office, and stare at my reflection in the window. I can't help but pose seductively, admiring my tall, athletic figure, my long dark hair, and my keen eyes. But this sight makes me grin, and grinning makes me see the foul pieces of metal attached to my teeth, and I scream with rage. I was supposed to have them off today. This nightmare was supposed to end. But some country nuked some other country, and they have retaliated back. People have fled the cities in chaos, soldiers have begun fleeing the military for fear of what their captains may force them to do, and so many people have begun scavenging. Someone has already ransacked this building. It's attached to a massive hospital, so it would be a treasure for any intelligent scavenger. Bleakly, I walk along these dark halls, hoping that one dentist still remains here... It's mere minutes of walking when I hear people talking, and my heart leaps. PLEASE. Let one of them be a dentist. I run towards the sound of their voices, knocking over chairs, slamming open doors, until I finally run into the large room where three young men in their early twenties stand, searching for anything remotely useful. One carries an AK-47, one carries a Machete, one carries a old-fashioned Nokia, tide to a thin metal pipe, and all three of them point their weapons at me as they see me.

 

* * *

 

"Well", says the man with the AK-47. "This was unexpected"  
"I- I just thought one of you was a dentist." I say, the feeling of hopelessness returning.  
The AK-47 wielder smiles at me. It's an odd smile; he looks like one of those fairly charming guys who has a cruel sense of humor that takes you by surprise.  
"Sorry to disappoint, miss." He says. "Seems everyone here's gone. Looks like it's just you and us."  
"So it seems." I agree. "I'll just go."  
"Wait, wait!" He, says, quickly grabbing my hand. "You don't wanna go! There's a frickin' apocalypse going on! You know you oughta to stick with a group, like us!"  
"You can trust us!" adds the chubby machete wielder. The Nokia wielder looks nervous, like he's not sure whether or not to agree with his friends.  
"I can fend for myself." I say sharply.  
"Can you now?" Says the gun-wielder, soundly like he actually believes me. "Well then, you've got to have scavenged some good stuff by now. Wanna at least see what we both have? Maybe do some trading?"  
"I don't have anything." I say. It's truth. The thought of being eternally stuck with braces has been too distracting for thoughts like survival.  
The gun-wielder blinks, then he brutally knocks me down with his gun. Before I know it, I'm lying on the floor, and he's crouching on top of me.  
"Liar." He snarls. "You've got that cockyness that means you know what you're doing, and that means that you've got stuff, or you know stuff at least. There's a fucking ARMAGEDDON that's still happening, I'll do whatever it takes to survive."

A feeling of dread washes over me as the AK-47 wielder motions for the chubby machete man to lend him his weapon. The fat bastard gleefully hands it over, and the Gun-wielder, still crouched over me, pushes his gun aside and starts cutting off my jacket.  
"She can't be older than six-teen" the fat man says "Think she's still a virgin?"  
What??  
Oh, hell, they're not just interested in stuff they can scavenge.  
The gun wielder finishes cutting my warm jacket off and tosses it aside.  
"First things first, you moron. Search the jacket, I felt something in the pockets."  
"That was probably just my phone," I say "what are you going to do, sell it in a world with no-"  
The gun wielder slaps me. "Nothing is completely useless." A crazy, lustful smile pops up on his face. "I can think of some uses for you sweet heart."  
He leans in as he says this, and I take my chance. I grab his head with both hands, and pull it towards me, slamming my forehead into face. He springs back in pain, and I lunge for his AK-47.  
"Kill the fucking bitch!" The former gun-wielder screeches, just before I stand up and slam the butt of his gun into his face, knocking him down.  
The fat man dives for his machete, but I aim a kick to his face, before dropping the gun and grabbing it myself - I'd rather not use a gun. I don't really know how.  
I pick up the machete just in time for the crazy gun-owner to stand up. I whirl around and slit his face open with it.  
His eyes widen in fear before blood starts spurting from the wound. He goes down again.  
The guy with the Nokia-stick is frozen in shock, but the fat man lunges at me. I stand still for a moment, before instinctively dropping down. Unable to slow down quickly, the fat bastard trips over me and goes down.  
I glare at the guy with the Nokia, who looks too frightened to fight.  
"Drop your weapon" I scream, and he gladly obliges. Immediately, I grab the Nokia-stick, and smash into the fat man's head. It goes right in and he stops moving.  
I slowly turn to last of these scavengers.  
"Run." I whisper, and he sprints for his life. He doesn't even look back. He doesn't see me pick his bosses AK-47 up. He doesn't see me aim, and I don't hear him scream as I launch several bullets into his back.  
The ringing sound of the gunshot hurts my ears, but I don't care. I have to keep moving. I NEED to find a dentist.


	3. Putting myself back together

I feel cold without my jacket. The gun-wielder cut it off me, ruining it, so I walk over to his corpse and start pulling his jacket off. It's a brownish-orange leather jacket, a couple of sizes too big for me, but it keeps me warm. 

Scavenging the jacket reminds me of how determined that creep was to scavenge something useful, so I decide to take the advice of the man I killed. The jacket is big enough to carry the Nokia-Stick, so I pick it up and place it in my new jacket. The AK-47 is big and heavy, but I know it'll be useful. I pick it up and start walking with it. It occurs to me how lucky I am - I told them I could fend for myself, but I really didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I'm not prepared for this world. The electricity stopped working several hours ago. I don't know if any of my family members or friends are alive. I don't know where I'll find food. I don't know where I'll find shelter. And most of all, I don't know how to get these braces off.  
Despite the horrible experience I just had, I realize I am going to need to find a group. That is what people do in apocalypses, right? Chances are that there's a group out there that has a dentist, and I will do whatever I have to do to find them. With an AK-47 by my side and a Nokia-Stick in my pocket, I make my way into the city. It doesn't matter that hundreds of thousands of people have begun fleeing the city, there is always people. And I know just where the people will go.

* * *

 I honestly don't have the faintest idea how the world got into this state so suddenly. The world was fine yesterday. But just four hours ago, the electricity died off. The phones stopped working. Planes started bombing cities, and soldiers could be seen riding in tanks, telling people they needed to evacuate their homes - the soldiers wouldn't tell anyone why, and we quickly found out they didn't  _know_ why, they just knew we were under attack. That was downright scary, finding out that the soldiers were as clueless as we were.   
Of course I ignored everything the soldiers said. Not even the end of the world was going to stop me from going to get my braces removed. But a few hours was all it took for the doctors and dentists to leave, and for there to be only creepy muggers and rapists, scavenging for whatever they could find.  
I'm still not sure how that could be possible. Were those men like that before the apocalypse happened? Did they go crazy after a few hours? I know that in all the movies, everyone is supposed to become a jackass focused only on survival if the apocalypse comes, but that seems a little unrealistic.

Then again people are unpredictable, complex beings who can do the strangest things in strange situations. In fact, there's only one constant thing I know about humans. There's one thing that never changes from person to person, no matter how much we insist it does, no matter how much we try to claim we are different, there is one thing in everyone's heart that will always be there.  
The love of food.  
A smile appears on my face as the city's biggest food court comes into view.

* * *

 

There's no bigger food court in the city than Chunkfood. The name was intended to be a play on the phrase "Junk food" which no one actually understood, but despite this there were over 50 different food vendors inside, and the fact that it was often crowded never stopped anyone from wanting to go there. There was bound to be food in there, which meant there was bound to be people. So I strolled through the empty streets in the food court's direction. The streets are quiet. Very quiet.

I stop in my tracks. Why are they quiet? Shouldn't there be scavengers looting them? The food court isn't the only place with valuable stuff in it.  
I don't know why no ones is around, and I don't like not knowing. Realizing how vulnerable I am, out in the open with nothing but an AK-47, I increase my pace and keep an eye out for anything that my be preventing people from being out here. But all I could here was the wind, and a couple of cars that people had apparently abandoned without turning off. It's like this all the way until I reach Chunkfood's main entrance, which typically has a passive padlocked chain around it. That shouldn't be too much of a problem though - the Nokia-stick will smash it to pieces. But before I can take it out, I finally hear something breaking the endless silence.

It sounds like the sound of someone frustrated. Someone who's got a problem that they can't fix. Someone who's run out of options. Someone who's broken down where they stand and has nothing left to do but making a pained, crying noise.

Except whoever's making this sound is not broken down - they are closing in, like a predator closing in on its prey.

I nervously search the jacket for spare ammunition as the source of the sound comes into view - a middle-aged man walks out of one of the ostensibly abandoned buildings fifty yards away, and starts turning his head in every direction. He looks angry, and he looks like he's trying figure out who take his anger out on.

 Then he turns his head towards me, and he starts running.

* * *

I find a spare clip in a pocket of the jacket. I'm not sure if I need it, but I'm about to find out.  
I don't waste a second as I point the AK-47 at the man's body and pull the trigger. In a few seconds I've used what little remained of the clip, and the man falls to the ground, dead.  
I reload before I cautiously walk over to his corpse. He doesn't look like a dentist, but he might have something useful - and he might have something that explains why he started running at me. I know there's an apocalypse happening, but people can't have become this crazy this soon. Can they?   
I start searching his pockets. Nothing unexpected on him - simple ID, a very nice phone, a wallet with some money and a photo in it. There's a picture of what's obviously his wife and two sons in the photo. Realising that the man I shot had a family, a hint of guilt starts trickling down my spine. Almost involuntarily, I slide the picture out of his wallet, and place it in his hand.  
And that's when I find something out of the ordinary.  
Embedded in his palm is what looks like 4 needles - like the ones on the end of a syringe. Just as I start taking a closer look at them, I hear another pained, crying noise. Coming from multiple directions. 

I start getting scared as multiple people start walking out of the buildings. They don't make the exact same noise, but they all sound angry and sad at the same time, like a combination of a growl and a sob. There can't be more than a dozen, but frankly I don't know if I'm ready to take on a dozen at once. Anyway, none of this people look like they can help me find a dentist. 

Smashing the lock is no longer an option - the wandering people might hear me and give chase. So I start carefully walking around the building.


End file.
